HDTV Expert
Peter Putman is the president of ROAM Consulting L.L.C. His company provides training, marketing communications, and product testing/development services to manufacturers, dealers, and end-users of displays, display interfaces, and related products.
Pete edits and publishes HDTVexpert.com, a Web blog focused on digital TV, HDTV, and display technologies. He is also a columnist for Pro AV magazine, the leading trade publication for commercial AV systems integrators.
Writes about
After 16 years, HDTVexpert.com is closing its doors. What began when HDTV was just finding its footing evolved into a front-row seat for every major display revolution, from 1080p to 4K and beyond. The author moves on to Sound & Communications and Display Daily, but leaves readers with a tantalizing question: if 8K is next, what unimaginable display technology waits further down the road?
AV-over-IP is reshaping more than signal routing - it's quietly dismantling the engineering workforce that built broadcast and professional AV from the ground up. As facilities trade dedicated technical staff for IT generalists and swap capital hardware investments for disposable commodity gear, the industry faces a reckoning few are openly discussing. Whether this shift delivers genuine efficiency or simply trades deep expertise for short-term savings remains an open and urgent question.
Twenty-five years of NAB Show attendance offers a striking vantage point: enormous hardware booths have shrunk, tape has vanished, and software now rules a floor once dominated by six-figure broadcast gear. Attendance dropped 11.6% in two years, and the show's identity feels uncertain. Yet 8K cameras from Sony, Sharp, Ikegami, and others signal where professional video is heading, with the 2020 Olympics poised to accelerate adoption in ways few anticipated.
Cable TV's slow death march is accelerating. Smaller operators like Cable One and Mediacom are hemorrhaging subscribers at double-digit rates, and analysts now question whether pay TV bundles are worth saving at all. As streaming reshapes how Americans consume content, major MSOs may soon pivot to pure broadband delivery - charging by the gigabyte rather than the channel. The shift is already underway, and the next decade could redefine how every household pays for television.
UltraViolet's shutdown announcement nearly vanished unnoticed into a spam folder - a fitting metaphor for a service most users had already abandoned. The digital content locker promised seamless access to purchased movies across devices, but its clunky registration process drove customers straight to Netflix and Amazon Prime instead. With major studios already gone and 30 million largely inactive accounts, its quiet death reveals how quickly even well-funded digital ecosystems can become irrelevant. The real question is what that means for today's streaming services.
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